


Bury the Moon

by darthjamtart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Slow Build, alternate season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 16:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/pseuds/darthjamtart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First things get bad. Then they get worse. Stiles doesn’t know what he’s sacrificed until it’s too late.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Dying is the easy part.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bury the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [suchaprince](http://suchaprince.livejournal.com/)'s incredible mix "Walking on the Devil's Backbone" as part of the 2013 Big Bang Mixup on LJ (masterpost [here](http://bigbang-mixup.livejournal.com/31344.html), mix [here](http://suchaprince.livejournal.com/42738.html)). The gorgeous art was created by [twisted-slinky](http://twisted-slinky.livejournal.com/), masterpost [here](http://twisted-slinky.livejournal.com/77013.html).
> 
> Story picks up right after season 2. Please see notes at the end of the fic for additional author warnings, which contain fic spoilers. A billion thanks to brilligspoons, the best beta anyone could wish for, with or without magic.

“Shit.”

Stiles slaps a palm down on the dash, one foot kicking disconsolately at the gas pedal. “Come on, come on,” he mutters, twisting the key as the engine sputters and fails, yet again, to come to life.

It’s Scott’s fault he’s even here, wasting a perfectly good summer day by himself in the high school parking lot. Scott was supposed to meet him for lacrosse practice, but of course he didn’t show. Stiles is getting more and more frustrated with Scott’s flakiness, especially when Scott doesn’t even have the excuse of needing to spend time with Allison. Unless they’re done with that whole break thing, in which case Scott really should have told him.

“Shit,” Stiles says again, and slumps down, resting his head against the steering wheel. It’s not at all comfortable.

“Car trouble?” someone asks, closer than Stiles was expecting, and he jerks in his seat, turning to face a smooth grin above tanned arms crossed on the rolled-down window.

“She just needs a little love,” Stiles says, and the stranger quirks a dubious eyebrow at him. “Okay, a lot of love,” Stiles amends, and the stranger laughs, extending a hand through the window frame.

“I’m Ethan.”

“Uh, Stiles,” Stiles says, and Ethan’s hand closes around his a little too tight — all the warning Stiles gets before Ethan tugs sharply, pulling Stiles against the car door and bruising his shoulder.

“I know,” Ethan says. “The human boy who runs with the Hale pack.” His grin flashes a little brighter, and his eyes flash red, a confirmation Stiles doesn’t really need. Stiles struggles instinctively against Ethan’s grip, then forces himself still.

Ethan pauses, as though judging the sincerity of Stiles’ surrender, and then lets go. He’s halfway across the parking lot when Stiles calls after him, “What, that’s it? You don’t want me to carry some stupid message to the pack?”

Stiles tenses when Ethan turns back to face him. There’s a cruel edge to his smile, and his words are just loud enough to drift back to the car. “Don’t worry, Stiles. You already did.”

Early afternoon sunlight scatters his vision, and Stiles squints through the windshield, reaching to twist the key in the ignition. The Jeep doesn’t start, and Stiles can’t remember how long he’s been sitting in the driver’s seat, listening to the engine wheeze. His arm hurts, like he’s bruised it somehow, maybe a bad landing during lacrosse practice. Except that he can’t actually remember the last time he practiced lacrosse — Scott didn’t show, something that’s turning into a routine occurrence. He rubs his arm absently while he clambers out of the driver seat to peer under the hood.

He hears the purr of the Camaro’s engine as it approaches, which is more warning than Derek usually gives him. “Have you called for a tow?” Derek asks, leaning out the window, and Stiles shrugs.

“I’m starting to feel like I’m abusing my triple-A privileges,” Stiles says. He slams the hood shut and ducks back into the car to grab his cell phone. When he emerges, victorious, already dialing the number for a tow, Derek looks away abruptly. “What, is there something on my butt?” Stiles asks, just as AAA answers and asks for his membership information.

“They’ll be here in half an hour or so,” Stiles tells Derek, once he’s ended the call. “Want to come back and give me a ride?”

Derek shrugs. “I’ll wait with you.”

Stiles stares blankly at Derek. “You’ll just wait. Here. For however long it takes for the tow truck to show up.”

Derek’s starting to look confused now. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says, and Stiles has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Wait, what? Since when does that happen?”

Derek’s look of confusion is swiftly turning to alarm. “You don’t remember?” he asks, but it’s clearly rhetorical. He looks away, mouth tightening, and his hand, draped over the window, curls into a fist. “I’m not going anywhere,” he tells Stiles, and tilts his head toward the passenger seat. “Get in the car.”

Stiles crosses his arms over his chest. “Why? It’s nice out, the tow truck isn’t coming for a while.”

Derek glares at him. “Because if the alpha pack shows up, we’ll need to move. Fast.”

“What alpha pack?” Stiles asks.

“Stiles,” Derek says. “We’ve already had this conversation. Just get in the car.”

Stiles gets in the car.

***

Scott’s waiting with Erica and Boyd when they pull up to the Hale house, and isn’t that a surprise – the last Stiles remembers, Scott hates Derek, won’t give him the time of day, much less show up for some sort of pack meeting. He tries to communicate his confusion to Scott via his eyebrows, but gives up when Scott just looks puzzled.

“Where’s Isaac?” Derek asks, and Scott shrugs, his puzzled expression changing to one of concern.

“I thought he was with you,” Scott says.

“Who’s Isaac?” Erica asks. Boyd, next to her, keeps his face impressively blank, but he tilts his chin, as if to echo her question.

Derek goes very still.

“It’s getting worse,” he grits out, after a moment, and Stiles stares around their small circle, then takes an abrupt step back when he notices Peter lounging against the wall in a dark corner.

“ _What’s_ getting worse?” Stiles asks. “And what is _he_ doing here?” He points an accusing finger at Peter, who is supposed to be dead, burned and throat slashed and _dead_.

“The alpha pack has the ability to remove people’s memories,” Scott says, too quietly. He sounds tired, like he’s explained this before, and Stiles remembers Derek’s comment, earlier, _we’ve already had this conversation._

“So why haven’t we _stopped_ them?” Stiles asks. In the corner, Peter is smirking, and Stiles scowls at him. The dead should stay dead.

Derek shakes his head. “We don’t know how.”

“They’re too strong,” Boyd says, and Erica shifts beside him like she wants to run, like she’s holding herself here through sheer force of will.

“How do we know how much of our memories they’ve stolen?” Stiles asks, and he’s running frantically through all his memories of his mother, like he’ll be able to tell, somehow, where there’s an unexpected gap. Nothing seems to be missing.

“We don’t,” Peter says softly, and Stiles’ chest clamps tight around his lungs, his pulse thundering in his ears. He didn’t even know he was scared until the panic attack steals his breath, and then Scott is in front of him, clutching at his hands and breathing with him until he can close his eyes and open them without black spots obscuring his vision.

“There has to be a way to protect ourselves from this,” Erica says, but she sounds uncertain.

No one answers her.

***

Derek drives both him and Scott home after the meeting. “No one goes anywhere alone,” Derek says, and Stiles would protest the command, but it’s not like he has any better ideas. There’s no safety in numbers, not for this, but it’s better than nothing.

He rings the house with mountain ash – he can protect his father as far as the front yard, at least. It will keep Scott out, too, but Stiles doesn’t know what else he can do. They still don’t know what the alpha pack wants. Or maybe they did know, and they’ve been made to forget.

Stiles is used to forgetting things. He counts the Adderall left in his prescription bottle twice, but he can’t remember how much he’s supposed to have left. He takes another one anyway. It can’t hurt.

It’s late in the evening when his father pulls into the driveway. Stiles tears his gaze away from the computer, from the research that’s told him precisely nothing useful, and heads downstairs.

“Hey, kiddo.” His father ruffles Stiles’ hair as he passes through the kitchen, ducking to peer into the fridge. “Your mom’s not home yet? I was thinking burgers for dinner.”

Stiles takes a breath, short and sharp, almost a gasp. His father turns a concerned gaze on him, fridge door still open. Stiles can’t say it, can’t make his father remember this.

“Hey, it’s all right,” his father says, and Stiles shakes his head, he can’t listen to this, can’t close his ears to his father’s reassurances. “I really don’t think she’s going to make us eat vegetarian again. That one month when you were six was more than enough.”

He has to say it. It’s worse if he doesn’t. “Mom’s not coming,” he manages, and when his father just looks confused, he forces the rest of it out. “Mom’s been dead for years. You...you forgot.”

And then it’s even worse, watching his father’s face crumple, the bewildered shape of the lines in his forehead, etching fresh loss around his eyes. “How could I not remember?” his father says, a choked-out whisper, and then fear cuts through the confusion. “I’ve been — this isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten something,” he says, and Stiles has to nod, even as he sees the understandable but wildly untrue conclusion his father is reaching.

“Everything’s going to be all right, son,” his father tells him, hand lying heavy on his shoulder. It sounds like a lie, like his father is trying to convince both of them of something, but Stiles already knows this isn’t a simple brain tumor.

Maybe it will be all right. Maybe it won’t be a lie. Just not for the reasons his father thinks.

“I know, dad,” Stiles says, and he moves impulsively, hugs his father tighter than usual and holds on a little longer so he can blink his eyes clear. “You’re gonna be fine.”

He’s going to make it be true.

***

There’s a werewolf in the frozen foods aisle, when Stiles runs out for groceries the next day. He’s wearing sunglasses and carrying a white cane, and he scrapes a smiley face with fangs into the condensation on the freezer door while Stiles is juggling a couple bags of fries.

“Stiles,” the werewolf says. Stiles weighs the waffle fries and tries to figure out whether they’d be any good as a weapon.

Probably not. “Do I know you?” he asks. “Because I don’t remember meeting you, but apparently that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, these days.”

The werewolf is smiling like he knows exactly what Stiles is thinking about doing with the waffle fries and finds it absolutely _adorable_. Stiles very carefully puts his frozen food options back in the case before he’s tempted to do something that will end very, very badly for him.

“I’m Deucalion,” the werewolf says. “Don’t worry, I’m not offended that you forgot my name.”

“Yeah, well, if that were my name, I’d probably be glad people forgot it,” Stiles says, like he has any room to talk. Although half the town has forgotten that Stiles ever had another first name, and the other half is just glad they don’t have to try to pronounce it anymore.

“Did you want something?” Stiles asks, finally, after Deucalion just stands there and smirks at him for a disconcertingly long time.

“Not right now,” Deucalion says, sounding far too agreeable for a werewolf who makes a habit of rifling through Stiles’ brain on a semi-regular basis. He could be doing it right now, for all Stiles knows.

Stiles shivers, glancing at the still-open frozen food display. There’s a smiley face with fangs drawn in the condensation, rapidly fading. Stiles blinks, and reaches for the fries. His arms are covered with goosebumps, and he can’t remember how long he’s been standing here. He must have zoned out, forgotten to take his Adderall or something.

He re-draws the smiley face before closing the freezer door. It’s not his best work. It doesn’t really look like his work at all, but it’s not like there’s anyone else in the frozen foods aisle.

***

Isaac’s at the next meeting, terrified to the point of shaking. They’re coming up on a full moon, and Isaac, it turns out, can’t remember how to anchor himself, how not to lose control.

“We don’t even know who to watch out for, because they keep making us forget what they look like!” Stiles kicks furiously at a nearby tree. Derek’s crossing his arms over his chest and trying to look like he has some semblance of control over the situation, but Stiles knows, Stiles _thinks_ he knows better.

Stiles doesn’t know anything.

“There might be a solution,” Peter says, and everyone turns to him, too desperate for answers to care who they come from. “We’re not the only ones with a vested interest, here.”

“I, for one, am totally in favor of any plan that involves a backup team of hunters,” Stiles says.

“We’re not working with the Argents,” Derek snarls, and Stiles stares at him.

“Why not? We’ve worked with the Argents before.”

Derek stares back. He doesn’t remember. “Shit,” Stiles mutters, and then, “You’re just gonna have to trust me on this, okay? I know Allison’s aunt and grandpa were all psycho or whatever—” and why couldn’t he have forgotten some part of _that_ experience, as long as they were forgetting things? “—but Chris Argent could help us. Has helped us.”

“Who are the Argents?” Scott asks.

Stiles swears, quietly at first, and then louder. Isaac might not be the only werewolf with a problem this full moon.

Into the silence, Peter adds, “That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

***

Deaton doesn’t remember who they are. There’s a mountain ash barrier that keeps everyone except Stiles from entering, so Stiles spends twenty minutes explaining what he can remember to Deaton by himself. When he’s done, Deaton frowns and picks up his phone. “Marin,” he says, when the call connects. “We have a problem.”

“Marin Morrell,” Deaton tells Stiles. “She’s on her way over.”

Stiles blinks. “The high school _guidance counselor_.”

“She might be able to help,” Deaton says, sounding perfectly serene.

“Help with what, sorting out my college applications?” Stiles says. He’s aware that there’s an edge of hysteria in his voice, but he thinks that’s understandable, given the circumstances.

Deaton gives him a quelling look, so Stiles goes to wait outside with the pack, who’ve been listening in the whole time. Not for the first time, Stiles thinks that werewolf hearing must be super useful.

Marin Morrell gets out of her car wearing substantially more leather than Stiles remembers ever seeing her in during the school year. “Seriously, was there some sort of supernatural dress code memo that I didn’t get?” Stiles mutters. Scott bumps shoulders with him sympathetically, and then Deaton and Morrell disappear inside, locking Stiles out along with the pack.

“What the hell?” Stiles yells at the closed door, and Scott shushes him, that faraway look on his face that means he’s eavesdropping again.

“What’s happening?” Stiles asks, when it becomes apparent that everyone except him can hear _something_.

“Deaton asked Morrell, ‘did you bring it?’ Not sure what ‘it’ is,” Derek explains.

“A book,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “I can hear them turning the pages. How quaint.”

“Morrell’s saying they can’t use it,” Erica whispers to Stiles. “That there’s no point.”

“Deaton’s saying it’s too dangerous,” Scott adds. “There’s no guarantee it would work, and…and it’s too big a sacrifice.”

“Morrell disagrees,” Erica says. “But she doesn’t think anyone would be willing to do it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

“How can they know if they won’t _tell_ us?” Stiles says, glaring at the door.

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter says. His head is cocked to the side, and he looks more annoyed than Stiles has ever seen him. “Deaton wants to get rid of it.”

“Oh, fuck, no,” Stiles mutters. He bangs on the door, then kicks it. “So that’s it, then? There’s a way to keep the alpha pack from stealing our memories, and they’re just going to keep it from us? And we’re _letting_ them?”

“We could always burn them out,” Peter says mildly, “but that seems like overkill.”

“You’d know,” Stiles sneers, and kicks the door again. His toes hurt.

The door opens. “Stop that,” Deaton says, frowning out at them. “Marin’s going to make some calls. We’ll find a way to stop this.”

“From what we could hear, you already _have_ a way to stop this,” Scott says, sounding thoroughly betrayed. He stares reproachfully at Deaton, who meets his gaze steadily.

“That’s not an option,” Deaton says, voice firm. “You need to trust me on this, Scott.”

There’s a long pause, but eventually Scott nods, backing down. The rest of the pack, however, looks mutinous.

Ms. Morrell has slipped into her car while they were distracted, and she pulls out of the parking lot like she’s already on the highway. Stiles glares after her disappearing tail lights, then startles when Peter sidles over and presses something into his hand. When he looks up, sharply, Peter presses a finger to his lips: hush. When Stiles shifts to look at what Peter’s handed him, Peter shakes his head. _Later_ , he mouths silently.

His hand is damp with sweat by the time Derek drops him off at home, and the neatly folded piece of paper sticks to his skin when he’s inside and finally lets himself look at it.

It’s obviously from a book of spells, one long edge ragged from where it’s been torn free. There’s a small, hand-lettered number _71_ in the bottom right corner of one side, and the top of that page looks like a continuation from whatever came before, something about banishing pixies. Stiles flips the sheet over to hand-lettered page _72_.

 _The Restoration and Protection of Memory,_ reads the heading. Well, that seems fairly straightforward. Stiles skims over the first few lines, the list of steps, and then stops short, eyes catching on the last paragraph.

_The spell is bound with the caster’s death._

Stiles lets out a slow, heavy breath. That’s…a pretty big sacrifice.

He folds up the paper again, even smaller this time, and tucks it into his pocket. He doesn’t want to forget about this, just in case. Maybe they’ll find a better solution. Maybe it won’t come to that. But the option will be there, if he needs it.

***

At first, Stiles assumes it’s yet another mind game, or some trick with mirrors. He stares at the werewolf who has him pinned against the side of his Jeep and then twists his neck to stare at the werewolf picking idly through the admittedly rusty engine parts under the hood. They’re identical.

“You know,” Stiles says, “If you’re going to be this handsy — with me _and_ my beloved car — I really think I should at least know your names.” He squirms slightly as the werewolf pinning him leans in and does some sort of creepy breathing thing against the side of Stiles’ neck, then twitches at the sound of metal creaking. “Hey! Put that back!”

The werewolf poking under the hood drops what looks an awful lot like a sprocket and camshaft on the ground. Stiles lets his head fall back against the Jeep’s window and tries for several deep, calming breaths.

“What is it with werewolves and the compulsive desire to mess with my car?” he asks.

The werewolf at the front of the car ducks up from under the hood for a moment. “I’m messing with your car. Technically, Ethan’s messing with _you_.”

“Are we really arguing semantics right now?” Stiles asks. “Fine. Okay. Ethan,” he says to the werewolf in front of him. “Did you want something? Other than to invade my personal space?”

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” Ethan says. “Aiden, however, was jealous. You see, everyone else in the pack has already met you. He was feeling a bit left out.”

“Right,” Stiles says, frantically trying to remember ever having met any of the werewolves. He can’t, of course. And it’s not like there are just these great big obvious blanks in his memory, either, because that’s not how brains _work_ — he’s been reading all the studies he can Google, on memory loss, on the way the mind can trick itself into thinking all sorts of things. His father had already filled him in on the notorious unreliability of eyewitness accounts.

There has got to be a solution for this. He can’t spend the rest of his life unable to trust anything he knows. They need their memories back, and they need to figure out what the hell the alpha pack even wants.

Stiles needs Ethan to stop sniffing at his neck. Gross. “Are we done here?” he asks loudly.

The hood slams shut. “I’m good,” Aiden says. “Put the kid down, Ethan. It’s not like he’s going to fight back.”

Stiles glares furiously but can’t disagree. He’d kick Ethan in the shin, but there are still teeth way too close to his throat.

He has a moment to hope, pulse ratcheting up as the twin werewolves turn away, that maybe they won’t take his memories this time. Maybe he’ll get to remember their faces. He blinks, and he’s staring at the side of the road, where several pieces of his engine are stacked neatly beside the Jeep. Stiles has no idea how they got there, but at least nothing looks broken.

It’s a familiar enough feeling, now — Stiles knows he’s been made to forget something, but he has no idea _what_. Sighing, he reaches for his phone and checks his call history, just in case AAA is already on the way.

***

Stiles has breakfast cooking when his father gets home from the night shift, eggs and toast and even a couple pieces of bacon. He figures if his father has to spend a couple days worrying about potential brain tumors, Stiles can at least make it up to him with some of the foods that he usually bans from his father’s diet.

The front door closes, and a moment later his father is standing in the kitchen doorway, gun raised and pointing at Stiles. Stiles freezes, one hand still gripping the spatula. In the pan, the eggs sputter and hiss. “Dad?” he says, eyes wide.

His father’s already lowering the gun, but he’s still frowning. “Who are you?” he asks. “What are you doing in my house?”

Stiles swallows hard against the sense that he’s falling. The room feels very small. “It’s me, Stiles,” he says, and he has to force the words out. “I’m your son.”

There’s no recognition in his father’s eyes. “I don’t have a son,” he says, and Stiles wishes he could be surprised by the statement. The toaster dings.

“I don’t suppose you remembered to look into that potential brain tumor,” Stiles says, and if there’s a hell, that’s where he’s going. He turns away from the stricken, terrified look on his father’s face, and plates the eggs. Everything might be shit, but they still need to eat.

***

It’s not that he even makes the decision to go through with it, exactly. It’s just that after going through the options, Stiles can’t see any other choice. They’re losing, and they can’t even remember the battle.

Stiles has nothing to offer but his death.

***

Stiles walks around the Hale house twice before Derek appears out of nowhere and slams him against the side of the building.

“Who are you?” Derek demands, eyes flashing red, one fist drawn back. His forearm is pressed against Stiles’ sternum, and it’s been long enough since Derek manhandled him this way that Stiles had almost forgotten how threatening Derek can be.

“Dude, chill!” Stiles says, shoving at Derek’s shoulders and, when that has no effect, tugging at his wrist. He might as well be trying to move Mt. Rushmore.

“What are you doing here?” Derek says. “What do you want?”

“I was looking for you, asshole,” Stiles says. “Clearly the alphas got here first.”

Derek tenses, then presses even closer. The pressure of his forearm eases a bit, but now his whole torso is millimeters away. It’s just as hot now as Stiles found it last time Derek did something like this, with the notable difference of Derek’s hopefully-temporary amnesia.

“What do you know about the alphas?” Derek asks.

“Probably more than you do right now,” Stiles says, lifting his chin. The red in Derek’s eyes recedes, and he steps back far enough for Stiles to throw an arm out, pulling up his sleeve in the process. “Check it out. Sharpie.”

Stiles has no idea how much he’s forgotten, or how much Derek has forgotten, but he does have a list of things written on his skin in permanent marker. He’s seen Memento. It ends badly. If it’s come to this, they’re probably all totally fucked.

Derek reads his arm slowly, his hands curling around Stiles’ wrist, twisting it gently to get a better angle periodically. The writing isn’t Stiles’ best work, but hey, it’s not like he remembers putting it there.

 **1) the alpha pack is stealing your memories** takes up the space between his inner elbow and his wrist, while **2) trust Derek Hale** is scrawled awkwardly just under it, on the side of his forearm. **3) check your pockets** is closer to his shoulder, and Derek slides the fabric of his shirt farther out of the way in order to read that part.

“What’s in your pocket?” Derek asks, when he’s done reading.

Stiles shrugs. “A solution. If we’re desperate enough to use it.” He licks his lips, gaze darting away. “I know you don’t remember. But things are really, really bad.” He pulls the folded paper from his pocket and waits for Derek to look it over, his face falling as he gets to the last paragraph. He looks up at Stiles sharply.

“You’re not planning to—”

Stiles nods.

“I can’t let you do that,” Derek tells him, his hand closing around the paper. Stiles gives him a steady look.

“Derek,” he says. “You don’t even remember who I am.”

He can practically see Derek weighing the options in his head. His hand extends, slowly, fingers still closed tight around the paper. “You’re just a kid,” Derek says, hesitating.

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Apparently there’s no one else.”

Derek’s fingers unfurl. Stiles shoves the crumpled piece of paper back into his pocket. “I need something of yours, to tie into the spell.” He pulls out a ziploc baggie from another pocket. The plastic has a list of names next to checkboxes written on it, also in Sharpie: **Dad, Scott, Lydia, Allison, Derek, Isaac, Erica, Boyd, Mrs. McCall, Peter.** Jackson’s already gone, having left for London with his parents before this mess even started.

Only the first name has an X drawn in the checkbox beside it. Inside the bag, there’s a single strip of fabric Stiles cut from one of his father’s oldest t-shirts, onto which Stiles has painstakingly glued a couple of hairs, gathered from his father’s pillow.

Magic, Stiles had reflected at the time, is a damn creepy business.

Derek raises an eyebrow at the last name. “My uncle’s at the hospital, in a coma,” he offers.

“He really, really isn’t,” Stiles says.

***

The spell is surprisingly straightforward. Or maybe not so surprisingly, Stiles reconsiders. By the time anyone is desperate enough to go through with it, it’s not like they’d want to struggle with parsing out overly complicated directions.

The heading, _The Restoration and Protection of Memory_ , is followed by a simple explanation of the spell’s purpose:

> _Memories stolen by an alpha werewolf may be restored, and any future attempts at such theft thwarted, if a caster undertakes the following steps:_
> 
> _First, gather items to represent each person who will be protected by the spell. A lock of hair is best, as the items must be bound into a rope._
> 
> _Second, fashion a noose out of the rope._
> 
> _Third, hang yourself on the night of a new moon. As a werewolf’s power is drawn from the full moon, it may only be countered at this time._
> 
> _The spell is bound with the caster’s death._

In small, careful letters, Stiles has filled the margins with reminders, the names of everyone he needs to protect. He’d waffled over including Peter, but any member of the pack left vulnerable to the alphas is a potential disaster. And Peter, it turns out, is surprisingly helpful.

“I was thinking someone could perform CPR, or something, afterward,” Stiles suggests, and Derek tilts his head — he still doesn’t remember Stiles from before, but CPR is something they all learned as kids, surely the alphas wouldn’t have bothered stealing that knowledge.

Peter snorts, and beckons them over to his car. Stiles has a brief moment of deja vu when the trunk pops open, but instead of a dead body, Peter has acquired a portable defibrillator.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “That could work."

***

Stiles was never a boy scout, but he totally deserves a merit badge for his Google-fu. The scouting guide to rope-making is a handy supplement to the Wikipedia article on the various techniques and materials. He ends up digging through a couple of drawers before coming up with a ball of twine, but after that it’s a simple process of twisting and braiding the strands and stolen items together.

He uses strips of fabric from people’s shirts to keep track of the hairs, for the most part. Lydia sacrifices a piece of her favorite skirt, along with a few strands from her hairbrush. The alphas don’t seem to have bothered with her, so far, but she already knows better than to trust what’s inside her own head. Scott donates string from the net of his lacrosse stick along with a stolen lock of Allison’s hair when Stiles asks, accepting the vague explanation that “it will help with the alpha pack.”

The whole time Stiles is gathering the items, he’s hoping for a way out. Some trick they haven’t tried yet, some defense still being developed. That the alphas will just lose interest and move on.

When he starts binding the rope, he’s hoping for a loophole. A last-minute resuscitation, a merely technical death: coding in the ER before being shocked back to life. Any scenario that means he’ll at least be able to find out whether or not the stupid spell even works.

It’s too much to gamble without any guarantee of success. Stiles knows it’s an awful plan, but it’s the only one he has. Lydia meets him for coffee and can’t remember how to calculate the tip. Her hands shake around the mug as she sits across from him and tells Stiles he can sleep at her place, as long as his father can’t remember who he is.

Stiles can’t remember ever having been to her house. She looks at him when he confesses this, and reaches out to clutch his hand. “At least I’m not the only who thinks she’s going crazy, this time,” Lydia mutters, and Stiles dredges up a smile.

***

Stiles has a ziploc baggie with names written on it tucked into the pocket of his jeans. There’s a checkmark in the box next to most of the names: _Dad, Scott, Lydia, Allison, Derek, Mrs. McCall, Peter._

Erica brings him the last pieces, gathered from Isaac and Boyd before the alpha pack closed in again. Boyd took the lead in distracting them while Erica ran, Isaac guarding her retreat.

“Thanks,” Stiles tells her. Maybe he’d told her what he’s planning, half a dozen mind-fucks ago. Maybe she’d protested.

If he survives this, they’ll never have to know what he’s willing to sacrifice for them. It seems like such a small thing, in the grander scheme of things: his life, for everyone he loves, everyone he cares about. And the collateral, like Peter, the people he’d happily dispense with, if it wouldn’t leave the pack vulnerable.

And if he doesn’t survive, well. Better to skip the arguments. Maybe there’s a better option. Maybe they already found it, but they’ve all been made to forget. If he ever had doubts about what he’s doing, he doesn’t remember them.

Erica curls up against his side while he binds the rope, twisting all the strands of his loved ones into the instrument of his own death. She doesn’t ask what it’s for.

***

The next time Stiles sees Erica, she doesn’t recognize him. To be fair, he also doesn’t recognize the guys she’s with, but Stiles has managed to piece together enough information from the fading Sharpie messages on his arm and the notes in his pockets to know that they probably aren’t strangers. He hopes not, anyway. They could be part of the alpha pack, for all he remembers.

He drives to Scott’s house and clambers through the window, narrowly avoiding a baseball bat to the face.

“Dude!” Stiles shouts. “Fragile human, here! Also, seriously?”

Scott brandishes the baseball bat and stares at him, wide-eyed. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

“Scott, man, it’s me, Stiles. Your best friend. Stiles.” When Scott doesn’t move, just keeps staring at him suspiciously, Stiles throw up his hands. “Would you at least put the bat down?”

The bat descends, slower than Stiles would like, but it’s an improvement. “What do you want?” Scott asks.

Stiles scrubs his hands over his face, sighing heavily. He’d wanted company, a few hours with his best friend before nightfall and the new moon. He’s wearing the finished rope like a belt, so he can’t lose it.

“Nothing. Never mind,” he says.

It’s still hours from dusk, mid-July sunlight turning the forest trails golden and glowing. If the spell doesn’t work, if their memories aren’t restored, at least no one will know to miss him.

Peter’s waiting for him at the Hale house. “Where’s Derek?” Stiles asks, and Peter shrugs.

Great. Stiles is going to die with no witness but the werewolf he’d least wanted to protect. He sprawls against the hood of his Jeep and watches the light fade behind the trees. When the sky begins to darken, Stiles turns his face from the first few glimmering stars and unwinds the rope from around his waist.

“It’s time,” he says.

***

Stiles opens his eyes to darkness and the false promise of light, the bright glittering specks of not enough oxygen. He’s flat on his back but everything feels tilted, and he closes his eyes again, trying to fight the sense of vertigo. He tries for a deep breath, and can’t.

It’s like a panic attack, but worse. His mouth opens, huge, gaping for breath, but all he can feel is the tight clamp of his ribs, the emptiness of his lungs. His throat won’t open, and he claws at the skin there, his fingers scrabbling, searching for the rope constricting his neck. He thrashes, wild, legs flailing, and his knees crack against solid wood. The sudden pain jars him into stillness.

Keeping his eyes closed, he reaches with trembling hands to explore the shape of his confinement: a coffin, he’s in a coffin, and then his lungs open with a wheeze, air rushing in and he’s alive, he’s alive and buried and _what the fuck is going on, here?_

Mouth set in a grim line, Stiles pounds his fists against the top of the coffin until the wood starts to splinter against his bleeding hands. Then he pulls his shirt over his head, leaving the collar buttoned tight against his throat, and ties it off as best he can. When the splintering board finally starts to buckle, at least he won’t be breathing dirt.

He’s sweating and exhausted by the time he pushes through the last layers of dirt and feels the fresh breeze against his fingertips. Stiles spares a moment to feel slightly insulted that he’s obviously been buried in an unusually shallow grave, maybe four feet of packed earth between the bottom of the coffin and the dewy graveyard grass. The starlight is almost blindingly bright when he pulls the shirt back down, uncovering his face, and he blinks, letting his eyes adjust. There’s no moon.

And then he’s staring at his own tombstone, with his given name spelled out in its full, unpronounceable glory. _Beloved son, 1995–2012._ There are flowers propped against it, barely beginning to wilt. A couple feet over, he spots his mother’s grave. He knows every pit and line etched into the stone from the few visits he’d made, trying to read something of her life in the marker of her death, and he turns away automatically, starts trudging toward home.

Stiles has no idea how he’s going to explain his sudden reanimation to his dad, but he’s really not looking forward to the conversation.

It’s nearing sunrise by the time he’s reached his street. His father’s car isn’t anywhere in sight, but Stiles has no idea what day it is, what kind of schedule his father might have picked up. He breaks in through an unlocked window and heads to the kitchen.

The fridge is empty. Completely empty, not even the ancient jar of pickles and half-empty bottle of ketchup that Stiles is used to seeing when they’re overdue for a grocery run. Like it’s been cleaned out, and it belatedly occurs to Stiles that he has no idea how long he was in the ground. That his father could have moved away years ago, unable to bear the reminders of his lost family in the home they’d shared.

But the furniture is still there, his room, his bed. He picks up the phone and there’s a dial tone, and before he can think about it he’s dialing Scott’s number, the home number he’d memorized in middle school, before they had cell phones.

Scott’s mom picks up on the third ring, her voice fuzzy with sleep. “Hello?”

“Uh, hi, Mrs. McCall,” Stiles says. “This is going to sound weird, I know, but, uh, it’s Stiles. Is Scott there?”

There’s a short, shocked silence on the other end of the line. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny,” Mrs. McCall says.

“I swear, it’s really me,” Stiles says. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, either. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be dead.”

For a moment he thinks Mrs. McCall is going to cry, the echoing gasp making something hurt deep in his chest. He hadn’t been able to let himself think of what it would be like for the people he left behind.

“Where are you?” she asks, and her voice is strangely level.

“Home,” Stiles says. “Hey, do you know if my dad is working the overnight shift?”

“I’m coming to pick you up,” Mrs. McCall says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He gets a glass of water from the sink and sits on the front porch, watching the lightening sky. The street is quiet and still, the neighbors just beginning to wake. Mrs. McCall’s car is the loudest thing he’s heard since he woke up in his coffin, and he pushes himself to his feet as the car pulls to a stop in front of his house.

Scott steps out of the passenger seat and approaches with a wariness that Stiles has never seen in his best friend. Not that he can blame Scott, considering the circumstances. He fidgets impatiently as Scott takes several deep breaths, as though he’ll be able to sniff out the mystery of Stiles coming back from the dead.

“It’s really me, man,” Stiles says, when Scott lingers on the sidewalk, looking suspicious. “Shit, we really should’ve established some sort of code word for this kind of situation.”

Scott’s mouth quirks into something that’s almost a smile. “It’s not like people haven’t risen from the dead before,” he says, and Stiles adopts a comically horrified expression.

“I can’t believe I have something in common with _Peter Hale_ ,” Stiles wails, and apparently that’s enough, because Scott runs the last few steps to drag Stiles into a clinging, rib-cracking hug.

“I can’t believe you did that, you asshole,” Scott mutters, right against his ear, and Stiles hugs him back as hard as he can, because Scott doesn’t sound angry, and Stiles didn’t expect this much understanding, even with everything they’ve been through over the last year.

When Scott finally lets him go, Mrs. McCall has stepped out of the car and is waiting on the sidewalk. “Stiles,” she says, and she’s not smiling. “There’s something you need to know.”

***

His father is dead.

Stiles’ knees give out, and he finds himself crumpled on the ground, knees scraping on the sidewalk, hands clenched into fists. There’s a high-pitched keening sound coming from somewhere, and he’s distantly aware of Scott’s hands, reaching for his shoulders, keeping him from curling in on himself.

His father is dead.

Something buzzes past his ear. There are birds chirping in the tree outside his bedroom window. Down the street, someone’s garage is opening, the first of the early morning commuters leaving for work.

He can’t breathe. He’s forgotten how. He closes his eyes, tilting until his forehead is resting against Scott’s shoulder, and wishes he were still in the darkness of his coffin, four feet of dirt between him and the life he never thought he’d get back. Four feet of dirt between him and the consequences of what he’s done.

Mrs. McCall is still talking. “I’m so sorry, Stiles. I knew he had a drinking problem, when your mother died, and I should have…I should have…”

It’s not her fault. It’s his fault. It was his job to take care of his father, his job to keep him safe. Stiles chokes, can’t make himself stop breathing, can’t make himself pass out.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This isn’t what he wanted.

He can picture it too clearly: the empty whiskey bottles, the glassy look in his father’s eyes. The curve of his hand, grasping the glass as he raises it for another sip, another sip, no one to pry his fingers away and say, _enough_.

He takes a shuddering breath, another. He doesn’t deserve to breathe. He doesn’t know how to stop.

“Stiles,” Scott says. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t know how to answer.

***

Stiles knows exactly what it feels like to be drunk, which means he knows exactly how much that won’t help right now. He stares at the lone bottle of scotch Mrs. McCall keeps in the back of a cupboard, and reaches for it anyway.

“Don’t,” Scott says, and Stiles lets his arm sag back to his side. His chest hurts.

“Why not?” he asks, but he’s already turning away from the cupboard. Right now he wants answers more than he wants the alcohol. “I need to talk to Peter.”

Scott nods. “I’ll call the pack.”

***

They meet at the Hale house. Derek’s waiting on the porch when Scott’s mom drops them off — her shift at the hospital starts soon, or she’d stay, she tells Stiles. He’s barely listening. He trudges toward the house, stopping just shy of the porch. This close, it’s impossible to miss the echoed grief in Derek’s face, and Stiles looks away, not wanting to see his own pain mirrored there.

“What, you’re not going to welcome me back?” Stiles mutters. Derek doesn’t say anything. There’s a shock.

Erica arrives next, along with Isaac and Boyd, and she hurls herself at Stiles, hugging him tight and then pulling back to slap him across the face before he can raise his arms to hug her back. He knows she’s pulling her punches, but it still stings. Her eyes are red-rimmed and he thinks he hears her call him an asshole before she hugs him again.

Allison and Lydia show up together — apparently Allison’s self-imposed exile from werewolf business had ended during Stiles’ brief stint below ground — and he returns Allison’s nod of greeting. Lydia says nothing, just stares at him furiously, bright spots of color staining her cheeks. She’s crying, and Stiles remembers when it would have devastated him to know that he was the cause of her tears. He would have died before hurting her.

Well. Technically, he did.

Peter saunters into the middle of the gathering like he’s been waiting to make a suitably dramatic entrance. He stops in front of Stiles, gazing at him levelly. Then he pokes Stiles in the ribs.

“Hey!” Stiles yelps, reaching out to shove Peter away and then thinking better of it. He ends up taking a stumbling half-step back, Scott darting forward to brace him by the elbow. “What the hell, dude?”

“Interesting,” Peter says, eyes narrowed. Then he smiles, and adds, “Welcome to the reanimated corpse club. Meetings are on Tuesdays.”

Stiles glares at him. “Did you even try to resuscitate me?” he hisses. “Or did you just leave my dead body hanging in the woods for anyone to find?”

Peter’s smile drops. “I tried, Stiles,” he says, and his voice is gentler than Stiles has ever heard. “When the defibrillator failed to bring you back, I tried CPR. I cracked three of your ribs.” He tilts his head consideringly. “They seem to have healed.”

Stiles shifts uneasily. His ribs feel fine. He actually feels about the same as he had the day of the full moon, a few lingering bruises but otherwise healthy.

“So why am I here?” Stiles asks. “Why am I alive? The spell worked, right? I remember the alpha pack, what they look like. That douchebag Ethan made me forget his face like three times!”

“Ah,” Peter says. “You might have been missing some information about the exact nature of the spell.”

Stiles barely has time to blink before Derek grabs Peter and tosses him halfway across the clearing.

“What information?” Derek asks, crouched over Peter, one hand tight around his uncle’s throat.

Peter delicately peels Derek’s fingers loose before speaking. “I believe Dr. Deaton still has the book in question. You should probably ask him.”

***

Deaton wasn’t included in the protection spell, but he doesn’t seem to have lost any additional memories since the last time Stiles saw him. He also doesn’t seem surprised to see Stiles.

“I wondered when you’d get here,” Deaton says, ushering Stiles and Scott inside. He quirks an eyebrow at Derek, who lingers in the doorway.

“You knew it wasn’t permanent, then,” Stiles says. Deaton shrugs, an elegant ripple of movement. When Stiles shrugs it looks like his shoulders have forgotten they’re attached to the rest of his body.

“I suspected. I didn’t know Marin had taken that page until later, though.” Deaton has the grace to look faintly apologetic. “She left town immediately after our meeting. When I saw that the page was missing, I assumed she’d taken it with her.”

“She gave it to Peter,” Stiles says, although he hadn’t seen the hand-off. Apparently no one else had, either, but Derek nods, like this is confirmation of something he already knows.

“Do you still have the book?” Scott asks, and Deaton crouches to retrieve it from a cabinet.

“Page 73,” he says softly, and Stiles immediately steps forward to flip through the small tome until he finds the ragged edge left by the stolen spell.

Page 73, like page 71 with its additional information on banishing pixies, is clearly a continuation of the previous page’s spell.

> _The caster’s death will be held until such time as the binding begins to fray. The first snapped thread will return the caster’s death on each new moon. When the rope is unraveled, the caster’s death will be released._

“What the hell does that mean?” Stiles asks. Deaton frowns at him.

“The spell is bound by the threads representing each person you chose to protect,” Deaton says. “When one of those threads snapped — when your father died — the spell returned your death, bringing you back to life.”

“So the spell is over? The alphas can just waltz around in our memories again?” Stiles can feel panic rising in his throat, _all for nothing, it was all for nothing..._

Deaton is shaking his head. “The spell is still in effect. As long as you don’t die by some other cause, the spell will continue to protect everyone you bound to your death.”

“So if Stiles’ dad hadn’t died, Stiles would still be dead?” Scott asks.

Deaton nods. Stiles stares at the floor, his breath coming too sharp, too fast. If he’d known, he could have...he doesn’t know. He couldn’t have promised his father he’d come back, not if it meant someone else had to die. He could have bound someone disposable into the spell, could have asked one of his friends to commit cold-blooded murder on his behalf.

He could have done that. He might have done that. At least then his father would be alive to be ashamed of him.

He closes his eyes, tries to remember the weight of his father’s hand, cradling the back of his head. _You’re a good kid, Stiles,_ his father had told him.

Stiles wasn’t the only one who lied.

***

“You should train with the pack,” Derek tells him on the drive back to the Hale house. Stiles is staring out the window, trying not to think. It mostly isn’t working.

In the backseat, Scott perks up. “Dude, yeah! You could be, like, eight billion times more badass! I bet Allison could help, too.”

Stiles slams a fist into the dashboard. It hurts a little, but none of his fingers are broken. Beside him, Derek reaches over and wraps his hand around Stiles’ wrist. “Don’t,” he says quietly.

“Why not?” Stiles asks. He stares dully at his wrist, where the warm pressure of Derek’s fingers is acting like a sort of anchor. His fingers hurt more, now.

“It won’t help,” Derek says, with the kind of solemn assurance that lets Stiles know Derek is speaking from experience.

Stiles goes back to staring out the window, but he twists his arm until his palm is resting face-up, just under the edge of Derek’s hand.

***

Deucalion is waiting for them in the woods. Stiles recognizes him this time, can remember the first time the alpha pack surrounded him on his way home, Kali pulling him from the Jeep even as he clung to the steering wheel. After that they barely touched him. They didn’t have to.

Ethan and Aiden are nowhere in sight, but Ennis is lurking a few steps behind Deucalion, and Kali is lounging against a tree, claws already out. Stiles swallows hard, knowing that they could shred his flesh as easily as they once shredded his memories.

“I must admit,” Deucalion says mildly, “I hadn’t expected your little magic-user to go quite this far.”

“You didn’t leave us much choice,” Stiles mutters, and Kali laughs, a low, sinister sound.

“We were only playing,” she says. “I didn’t want you dead.” She smiles at him, and Stiles takes an involuntary step back. Of course her smile is predatory. It doesn’t _mean_ anything. But Derek has bared his teeth in a snarl, and his hand is curled tight around Stiles’ elbow.

“What _do_ you want?” Scott asks.

“What does anyone want?” Deucalion asks, and Stiles is tired of this, tired of the stupid word games and double-speak and never getting a straight answer. He steps forward, shaking off Derek’s hand and side-stepping Scott.

“Just tell us,” Stiles says. “If you’re not trying to kill us, maybe we can negotiate.”

“How optimistic,” Kali murmurs, and she sways forward, making no sound as she steps through the twigs and leaves. “This wasn’t always Hale territory, you know.”

Derek tenses behind him. “My family has held this land for over a century,” he says. Deucalion smiles. It’s not a pleasant look.

“Yes,” Deucalion says. “And before that, other packs left their mark. Why do you think your ancestors settled here?” He runs a hand over a nearby tree trunk, massive and ancient at the edge of the clearing.

“You did all this over some stupid territory dispute?” Stiles asks. Behind Deucalion, Ennis lets out a low growl. Stiles has never heard him form actual words, but it doesn’t make Ennis any less intimidating.

“Would you leave, if we asked?” Kali steps closer, until she’s right in front of Stiles.

“There’s nothing keeping me here,” Stiles mutters, and Kali reaches for his throat.

“Say it again,” she says. Derek’s hovering next to them, but with her claws pricking at the soft skin of Stiles’ neck, there’s no way he can tear her away without injuring Stiles. “I want to know what it feels like when you’re lying.”

“Let go of him,” Derek says, low-voiced, claws out. Stiles can’t turn his head to look, but he knows Derek’s eyes are as red as Kali’s. Her fingers tighten around Stiles’ throat as she meets Derek’s gaze.

“Would you leave?” she asks Derek. “If given enough...incentive?”

“I’ve left before,” Derek says.

Deucalion turns to Scott. “And what about you? Pack-less, but not an omega — would you leave with the others?”

Stiles wishes he had some way to calm the rapid thump of his pulse against Kali’s hand. Instead, he’s stuck telegraphing all his anxiety, every minute reaction.

“This is my home,” Scott says slowly, like he’s actually paying attention to how his answer might affect Stiles. He pauses, then, and waits for Deucalion to tilt his head at Kali, who gently removes her hand and steps away from Stiles.

“I’d like some more time to consider,” Scott says, and Deucalion nods.

“We can be generous,” Deucalion says. “For a little longer, at least.”

“Why not just kill us?” Stiles asks, before he can stop himself. Deucalion gives him a considering look.

“Violence can be so wasteful,” he says.

“And you wouldn’t necessarily walk away intact,” Derek suggests. Kali laughs softly.

“Think what you like,” she says, and the alpha pack disappears into the trees.

***

“I’m not leaving,” Scott says, once they’re sure they’re alone. “My mom is here, and, come on, I’d still like to finish high school!”

“You have to be alive to finish high school,” Stiles points out. He stares at the ground, wondering if that’s even an option for him, now. Being legally dead is probably going to cause some problems.

“Maybe,” Peter suggests, casually strolling out from behind the porch like he hasn’t been hiding out of sight this whole time, “we should find out what they want from the territory, once they have it.”

Derek stills, staring at his uncle. “You know,” he says accusingly.

“I have a hunch,” Peter says.

They end up waiting for the rest of the pack to re-convene. Erica locks elbows with Stiles as they trudge through the woods, Boyd keeping to the back while Isaac drifts toward the front and sides. Lydia opted to stay home for this meeting, along with Allison, and Scott is scowling as he walks alongside Derek.

They can work together, Stiles thinks, but that doesn’t mean they’ll ever be friends. Which sucks, because Derek’s actually been pretty awesome. Stiles can remember now — all the times Derek waited with him, watched his back, reached out to Scott only to be constantly rebuffed.

Stiles knocks shoulders with Erica, who grins back at him. “So what’s up with you and Boyd?” he whispers, hopefully quiet enough that only her wolfy senses will pick it up.

Erica wrinkles her nose at him, shrugging, then rolls her eyes. On-again, off-again, soon to be back on, Stiles guesses, and the fondness in her eyes when she darts a glance back at Boyd confirms it.

“This is far enough,” Peter says abruptly, and they all stumble to a stop — well, Stiles stumbles. The werewolves are a bit more graceful about it.

It looks like everywhere else in the woods, Stiles thinks, looking around. But Derek is narrowing his eyes, nostrils flaring slightly as he takes in the scents. It should look ridiculous, but Stiles can’t look away from the intense focus on Derek’s face. When he tears his gaze away, Erica is watching him with a knowing expression.

“What?” Stiles says, and she shakes her head. Later.

Peter turns to face them. “The Hale pack first settled here at the end of the nineteenth century,” he says. “My several-times-great-grandparents fled hunters in England, and ended up in California.” He looks around, meeting everyone’s eyes before turning his attention back to the trees. “There was no pack here, then. So by all accounts, the Hales were quite surprised when they were first approached by a, shall we say, consultant.”

Stiles gets it first. “Someone like Deaton,” he says, and Peter nods approvingly.

“The Hales had never been in contact with other elements of the supernatural world, until then,” Peter says. “Having an outside liaison allowed us to forge connections with other packs, share resources without infringing on each other’s territory.”

“So diplomacy between werewolves relies on human ambassadors?” Stiles asks.

“Not always, and they need the right...credentials.” Peter gazes at Stiles, head slightly tilted, smiling faintly.

“Magic,” Erica says, and Peter shrugs.

“Not always,” he repeats. “But it helps.”

“So how does this involve the Hale territory? Is there some super-special magic tree in the woods here, or something?” Stiles spins around, trying to figure out which, if any, of the trees might have magical powers, but they all look like ordinary trees to him.

“The land is useless to a werewolf pack alone, just as it won’t help someone like Deaton, who’s unaffiliated with a pack.” Peter is still looking at Stiles, and when Stiles looks around, Boyd, Isaac, and Scott are all watching him as well. Erica slips her hand into his, squeezing gently, but she keeps her gaze fixed on Peter.

Derek isn’t looking at any of them, and Stiles tries to glare at the sharp set of his shoulders. “You shouldn’t have brought him here,” Derek mutters, and the sound is almost lost in the rustle of wind through the surrounding trees. “He’s not pack.”

Stiles doesn’t have to be a werewolf to know Derek is lying. He might not have been given the bite, but he’s part of Derek’s pack nonetheless. Stiles chose this, chose to fight with them, and Derek let him, turned to him for help time and time again.

Peter laughs. “He’s died for us. If you’re stupid enough to ignore what an asset he’d be, you don’t deserve the pack you’ve created.”

Derek’s shoulders fall, the tiniest increment, and Stiles can almost hear his thoughts: _I don’t deserve a pack at all._

Something shifts, beneath his feet, and for a moment he thinks they’re having an earthquake. But no one else is reacting, and he closes his eyes, trying to lose the sense of vertigo, focusing on the reassuring pull of gravity. Instead, something else snaps into place. He opens his eyes and Derek is staring at him, and he can _feel_ Derek, guilt and grief and a seething rage, undercut with fear.

Stiles shakes his head, and the connection is gone, but as he looks around at the others, that sense is there, open to him. Isaac’s wariness, Boyd’s steadying calm and the surprising depth of his love for Erica, Scott’s warm friendship, and even Peter, a disquieting jumble of emotions laid suddenly bare.

“What the fuck,” Stiles says, and Erica squeezes his hand again, concern for him and more affection than he ever suspected, despite her confession all those months ago and the time they’ve spent together since then. “What did you do to me?” he asks Peter.

Peter spreads his hands, and Stiles knows, under his skin, that he’s sincere. “I didn’t do anything. You committed yourself to the pack. Derek, as alpha, accepted you. The latent magic here cemented the bond.”

Stiles looks sharply at Derek, letting the roil of Derek’s anxiety and regret sink between them. He’d thought Derek liked having him around, but apparently not. Wordlessly, Stiles turns and starts trudging away from the pack.

Without a direct line of sight, his sense of the pack fades rapidly. Still, he’s not surprised when Erica links elbows with him, or when Scott comes crashing through the underbrush to join them.

“We still need to figure out a game plan for dealing with the alpha pack,” Scott says, when they’re almost out of the woods, and Stiles stops short, glancing at the edge of the Hale house, barely visible through the trees.

“They don’t just want the land,” Stiles says, because he can remember, now — every interaction he’d had with the alpha pack, snippets of conversations that never went anywhere, teasing threats with no follow-through. “They need a human, too, someone who can tap into the power on behalf of the pack.”

“I guess that explains why Ms. Morrell skipped town,” Erica says.

Stiles snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t their first choice. Deucalion must have thought that if Deaton couldn’t remember us, he’d be more likely to ally with the alpha pack.”

“Why _didn’t_ Deaton agree to work with them?” Scott asks, and Stiles shrugs.

“He’s your boss. Why does he do anything?”

Scott grins at him, and Erica rolls her eyes. It’s almost like Stiles hasn’t been dead for a month, hasn’t woken up to a world in which he’s fatherless as well as motherless.

He can still feel Derek, like a whisper across a crowded room, more the suggestion of sound than the reality. The sense that Derek is drawing closer is like trying to listen with his stomach.

Or no, wait. It’s just that Stiles is hungry. His stomach growls, and Erica snickers in response.

“All right,” Stiles says, and he closes his eyes, tries not to sway on his feet in exhaustion. It’s been a long day. “I vote we discuss our next move over dinner.”

“We can meet at Lydia’s,” Scott suggests, quickly enough that Stiles knows he must have been texting the idea of dinner plans already with Allison.

“I’ll tell the others,” Erica volunteers, and then Stiles is alone with his best friend, and he can’t even meet Scott’s eyes without feeling completely overwhelmed by Scott’s sympathy. He stares over Scott’s shoulder, instead, and waits for the feeling to subside.

“So,” Stiles says, for lack of anything less trivial to focus on, “what happened to my Jeep?”

***

Lydia has pizzas waiting when they arrive. Scott and Stiles are the last ones there, having detoured to Scott’s house to pick up Stiles’ Jeep.

“I mean, I did say you could have my Jeep when I was dead,” Stiles muses, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. He parks on the street outside Lydia’s house and doesn’t move. It had been a joke, mostly, at the time.

Scott nods, clearly trying to look encouraging. “I took good care of her for you,” Scott says, gesturing at the hood of the car. “Not that I knew you were coming back to life, just. You know.”

Miraculously, there’s still some pizza left when they make it inside. Erica slides a box over to Stiles, still half-full of his favorite toppings. Scott makes do with what’s left of Isaac’s Hawaiian pizza and the lone remaining slice of hamburger and mushroom.

Derek and Boyd are taking out the trash when Allison starts talking about heading home for the night, and offers Scott a ride. Scott’s gone before Stiles has finished coming to the realization that the last place he wants to go right now is his own house. The idea of spending the night alone there, knowing that his father was just...

The whole point was that Stiles wouldn’t have to live with what he’s done. What’s he supposed to do now?

He goes to rinse out his glass in the kitchen sink. When he turns around, Derek is standing in the doorway.

“You can stay with me. If you want,” Derek says, and Stiles is actually considering it, and he’s seen the kinds of places Derek considers habitable. Still, he’ll take an abandoned warehouse or burned-out wreck over facing his own ghosts, at least for tonight. He’s opening his mouth to accept when Lydia brushes Derek aside, bustling into the kitchen and wrapping one hand around Stiles’ arm.

“Don’t be silly. He’s crashing here tonight, aren’t you, Stiles?”

Lydia’s not a werewolf, but she’s pack regardless — whether it’s Derek’s acceptance of her presence at pack meetings, or whatever Peter did to her to bring himself back to life. She’s harder to read than the others, who are apparently linked more directly, but when Stiles meets her gaze, he can sense a welcoming warmth, and under that a quiet longing.

“Thanks for the offer, though,” Stiles says to Derek, shrugging, and there’s a fading sense of relief as Derek turns away, still layered with the ever-present grief and guilt. It’s impossibly frustrating, knowing what Derek feels but never quite understanding _why_. If Derek didn’t want him around, why offer? Stiles focuses back on Lydia, who smiles brightly at him. She’s not as happy as she’s pretending to be.

“Will your parents mind?” Stiles asks.

“They’re hashing out the details of their divorce on vacation,” Lydia says. She rolls her eyes, leading him out of the kitchen and to the guest room, upstairs. “He’s in Rio and she’s in Belize.”

“That sucks,” Stiles says, mostly for lack of anything else to say. He sits down on the guest bed, and Lydia curls up beside him, resting her head against his shoulder.

“When the spell worked,” Lydia says quietly, which is more tactful than _when you died_ , Stiles thinks. “I wasn’t sure if Jackson wasn’t calling me because he didn’t want to, or because the alphas got to him before he left, and we didn’t know about it.”

“Did you call him?” Stiles asks.

Lydia sits up, folding her knees up toward her chest and curling her arms around her legs. She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Better to make a clean break, either way.” She hesitates, and Stiles hates seeing her vulnerable like this, hates the way he can sense her loneliness like a reflection of his own.

He’s loved her for so long that he can’t remember when it started being about wanting her, or when it stopped. He slides closer to her on the bed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and tugging her back down, his own miserable sun. He could no more stop loving her than the moon could stop orbiting the earth.

“You can share my bed, if you want,” Lydia offers, and Stiles wonders if the link lets her sense him, as well, or if she’s offering more than just a bed. “Just to sleep,” she clarifies.

“That sounds good,” Stiles says. Maybe tomorrow he’ll want to be alone, but right now, the thought is almost unbearable. They take turns in Lydia’s bathroom, after she digs up a spare toothbrush for him from a closet down the hall. He borrows an old t-shirt to wear with his boxers, and when he settles into her bed, Lydia curls her body around his, wrapping an arm over his stomach. He falls asleep to the light pressure of her breathing against his spine.

***

The bed is empty when he wakes up, late morning sunlight streaming through the window. He turns his face into Lydia’s pillow, waiting to see if the lingering smell of her hair will awaken some sexual drive in him. It doesn’t, but he feels comforted all the same: Lydia’s been in his life since before his mother died, before he was friends with Scott. She’s a constant for him in a way few other things are.

She’s got an omelette waiting in the oven when he makes his way downstairs. “Scott’s called a meeting for later today,” Lydia tells him while he eats. “He thinks he has a plan to deal with the alphas.”

Scott’s plans have improved over the years, but then, they couldn’t exactly get any worse. Still, it’s not like Stiles has any ideas of his own, right now. Short of them all leaving town, which, well. “Would it be so bad, to cut and run?” Stiles asks Lydia, then cringes at the look she gives him in return.

“Yes,” she says. “Where would you go? And what makes you think the alpha pack wouldn’t just hunt you down once you’re on the run? You’d have no home ground, no tactical advantage, and they’re still physically stronger than you.”

That pretty much sums up the situation, Stiles thinks. He finishes his omelette in glum silence.

***

“I think we need to set a trap,” Scott says, when they’ve all convened again. Erica is toying with her hair, nestled against Boyd, who’s frowning at the map Scott has laid out. Stiles peers at the lego people Scott has placed at various points. Some of them have fangs marked onto their smiling yellow faces.

“That one’s you,” Allison whispers helpfully, pointing at an un-fanged lego person with brown hair. It’s wearing a baseball uniform, and Stiles scowls at it.

“Seriously, dude?” he asks Scott.

“I didn’t have any lacrosse-playing lego people,” Scott says. “Anyway, if we could focus on the plan?”

Stiles looks at Derek, who doesn’t look any happier with his plastic representative than Stiles does. “Fine,” Stiles says, and Scott puts a toy car down on the map. It’s black, which is the only way in which it resembles Derek’s Camaro, and it covers five streets and an edge of the forest.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Derek mutters.

“Look, I know it’s not quite to scale, but that’s not the point,” Scott says. “We’ve had altercations with members of the alpha pack here, here, here, here, and here.” He uses a blue Sharpie to mark locations on the map. “I think they’re staying somewhere in this area.” He switches to a red Sharpie, drawing a circle around a few blocks on the other side of Beacon Hills. “What if Stiles could trap them inside with mountain ash, or something?”

“Uh, that doesn’t seem like a permanent solution,” Stiles says. “I don’t know how long that stuff lasts.”

“Not very,” Peter contributes. “You’d have to re-enforce the line every month. And that’s assuming it isn’t broken by some other means.”

“Of course it’s on a lunar schedule,” Stiles mutters. “What freaking isn’t with werewolves?”

“But it doesn’t have to be permanent!” Scott says. “Look, if we can get them pinned down, limit their movements, Allison can take them out from a distance, one at a time.” He grins at Allison, who smiles back, looking pleased. She and Scott have clearly been discussing the idea.

“But the mountain ash will limit our movements, too,” Boyd points out, and Isaac nods.

“And what’s to stop them from just moving to a different spot, on the other side of town?” Isaac asks.

In answer, Scott uses the blue Sharpie to draw a giant circle around the entirety of Beacon Hills, then draws a smaller circle inside that one, in red. “Because Stiles will make increasingly smaller circles, with us on the outside, until they’re trapped. Stiles can break the outer circles at any time, once we confirm that the alpha pack is contained in a smaller area.”

“We should set up some safe zones, first,” Lydia suggests. “Have Stiles ring a couple buildings with mountain ash so he always has somewhere to run.”

“Like your house?” Stiles asks, raising an eyebrow, and Lydia tosses her hair.

“If you think it’s a good idea,” she says, like that wasn’t what she was angling for.

“No, I agree,” Allison says. “Scott, you and the other werewolves can run faster and defend yourselves longer if the alpha pack attacks while we’re setting this up. We need to make sure Stiles and Lydia are safe, too, even if it keeps everyone else out for a little while.”

“You need to stay safe, too,” Scott says earnestly, and Allison squeezes his hand over the map.

“I will,” she promises. Stiles reaches out to roll the toy car across the map and tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. When he looks up at Derek, the feeling of anxiety increases ten-fold, and Stiles has to look away. It’s too hard to separate his own feelings from the complicated roiling of emotions echoing through the bond.

“Let’s get started,” Stiles says, and the meeting breaks up, with Scott and Allison accompanying Stiles to Deaton’s to see how much mountain ash they can get there.

***

Stiles has enough experience with this by now to know he can use the mountain ash sparingly. He starts with Lydia’s house, and picks other buildings at random, as long as they aren’t places his own pack needs access to any time soon. Derek drives him in a wide perimeter around Beacon Hills, counter-clockwise, while Stiles drapes one arm out the passenger window, leaving a trail of mountain ash in their wake.

They know it’s working when Derek tries to drive out of town and can’t make his foot press down on the gas pedal.

It’s frustratingly slow, waiting to close in on the alpha pack. Stiles tries treating it like a binary search, cutting the circle in half, but the mountain ash barrier doesn’t seem to work as an added line. It has to be a closed circle, complete in and of itself. And the alpha pack is maddeningly elusive. It’s almost a week before Erica calls Stiles, reporting, “I’ve got eyes on Ennis.”

“Where?” Stiles asks. Derek’s already waiting in the Camaro, and Stiles slides easily into the passenger seat. He’s spent more time driving around with Derek than he’s spent doing everything else combined, this week. At first he’d tried to talk, but Derek’s feelings of anxiety and regret kept spiking through the link. It was impossible to focus on the few words Derek actually spoke when it seemed like Stiles’ very presence was a torment. When Stiles remains silent, the bond settles down into a constant simmer of grief and guilt that leaves Stiles feeling faintly queasy, but seems to have less to do with Stiles himself.

“The drugstore on Main,” Erica says. “He’s heading out the back. I’ll follow.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Stiles says. “Keep your distance.” He clutches the bag of mountain ash, already trying to figure out the best circumference for the circle to trap Ennis without also capturing Erica inside.

They’ve been driving for five minutes and they’re almost there, faster than Stiles would have made it in his Jeep, when pain tears through him. It’s like his heart is being clawed out of his chest, fire ripping through his lungs, and he screams, doubling over in the passenger seat of Derek’s Camaro. Distantly, he hears tires squealing, seatbelt pulling tight against him as Derek slams on the brakes.

“Stiles! Stiles, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

Derek’s claws are out, but his grip around Stiles’ wrist is strangely gentle despite the urgency in his voice. Stiles screams again, heartbeat stuttering to an abrupt, brutal stop. He breathes Erica’s last breaths with her, whimpering as the bond between them snaps, another thread in the noose gone. The pain fades, and Stiles realizes he’s crying.

“Erica,” Derek says. It’s not a question, and Stiles knows Derek must feel her absence, now, his own ties to the pack letting him know of her death, if not making him feel it as it happens.

“Too late,” Stiles says. “Oh my god. _Erica_.” He scrubs a hand over his face, stares out the windshield. “Keep driving,” he says. “It’s not too late to trap Ennis.”

Stiles waits to call Allison until he’s sure Ennis is trapped inside a fairly small perimeter. He doesn’t know how to tell her what’s happened, but “when Ennis is dead, we can retrieve Erica’s body” was probably not the best approach. Allison goes silent on the other end of the line.

“I’ll tell the others,” she says, finally, and Stiles nods, forgetting for a moment that she can’t see him.

“One down, four to go,” Stiles says, when it’s done, and watches Derek hesitate outside the car. The grief pooling between them is too much for Stiles to deal with right now, so he looks away, stares out the passenger window while Derek drives him back to Lydia’s for the night.

The bond is growing stronger, Stiles thinks. Derek’s guilt feels like an anvil, pressing on him even when he’s looking away. He sits in the car for a moment outside Lydia’s house, remembering how Derek reached for him in the moment of Erica’s death, fear blistering in the imprint of his fingers on Stiles’ wrist. Touch amplifies the sense, Stiles realizes, and reaches for Derek’s hand.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, and Derek’s guilt is going to drown them both. Stiles pushes back, asserting what he knows to be true. “You couldn’t have saved her.”

Derek bows his head, and Stiles reaches out on instinct, grasping the back of Derek’s neck and stroking the short hairs at his nape until the tension shudders out of him. He’s never seen Derek cry before, and Stiles sits with him until he’s done, lets his fingers still at the edge of Derek’s surprisingly soft hair.

Lydia’s waiting in the doorway when he gets out of the car. “Tell Derek to come in,” she says. “Everyone’s staying here tonight.”

***

“We need to be more careful,” Allison says the next day.

“Because we were being so reckless before?” Stiles snaps back, and Scott nudges him with an elbow.

“We’re all upset,” Scott says, his tone too reasonable for the mood Stiles is in. Boyd glowers at everyone, his own sense of loss apparent even without the bond. Isaac’s eyes are puffy.

“The plan did work,” Allison points out. “Ennis is dead.”

“So we stick with it,” Lydia says. “Does everyone agree?”

There’s a series of nods, all around the room. Stiles stares at the wall and tries to sort out his own feelings from the miasma he’s getting from the rest of the pack. It gets easier when they split up for the day, but Stiles turns his face to the morning sky, taking several deep breaths, before he gets back in the car with Derek.

***

They aren’t the only ones being more careful. With Ennis dead, Stiles had half-expected the alpha pack to attack in force immediately, but if he didn’t know for a fact that they were still caught inside an increasingly small perimeter, he’d suspect that they’d fled Beacon Hills entirely. It’s another week and a half before they confirm that Ethan and Aiden are caught in a one-mile radius Stiles had set up.

“I’ll call Allison,” Derek says.

“I’m going to see if I can box them in further,” Stiles says, and crosses the circle before Derek can stop him. He’s already got a safe zone set up inside this perimeter, right in the middle, so he should be able to narrow it down by another mile by the time Allison gets here.

“Stiles!” Derek calls after him, but Stiles turns away from the fear and anger, turns away from the bewildered shock on Derek’s face, and jogs a half-mile in, mountain ash clutched in one hand. He’s sick of waiting, sick of grieving, and the memory of Erica’s death has him jolting awake most nights, his own death a rapidly-fading nightmare, diminished by this new agony.

He’s almost completed the circle when Aiden strolls out from behind a fence, smiling. “Stiles,” Aiden says. “I suppose I have you to thank for our limited mobility, these days?”

Stiles eyes the distance remaining before the circle is complete. There’s no way he can finish it before Aiden tears his throat out. Stiles drops the remaining mountain ash and starts backing away. Aiden just keeps strolling toward him, not increasing his pace, and why should he? Stiles is nowhere near the outer perimeter, and when he turns and starts running, he’s actually moving closer to the center.

Stiles knows better than to think he can outrun a werewolf, but he’s got a ring of mountain ash just around the corner, the safe house he’d set up earlier, and Aiden seems to be treating this like a game. Stiles risks a glance over his shoulder and catches sight of Aiden’s lingering smirk and waiting claws, prowling slowly after him.

He skids around the corner, legs aching, and he’s ten seconds from safety, nine, eight, seven...

Ethan cuts him off five feet from the line of mountain ash, slamming into Stiles from the side and pinning him against the wall of the closest building, right next to the one Stiles has ringed with mountain ash. So close. Stiles curses under his breath. “Hello, Stiles,” Ethan says, and eases back to arms-length, one hand closed tight around Stiles’ neck. “It’s nice to see you alive again. Shame it won’t last.”

“Wanna bet?” Stiles gasps, kicking out, and Ethan laughs merrily, hand closing tighter, like a noose. Spots dance at the edge of Stiles’ vision.

He’s about to black out when there’s a whistling sound, and an arrow buries itself in Ethan’s back. Ethan sags, dropping Stiles, fury transforming his face. He swings at Stiles with clawed hands, slicing deep gouges in Stiles’ shirt. Blood wells up on Stiles’ chest, and he staggers backward, into Aiden’s waiting arms.

The wolfsbane and a second arrow kill Ethan before he can do any more damage, and Allison steps forward even as Aiden pulls Stiles close against him, using him as a shield.

“Careful, hunter,” Aiden says. He’s not smiling anymore, face grim as he surveys the dead body of his brother. “Wouldn’t want to hurt your little friend.”

“I won’t,” Allison says coolly, and she buries an arrow in Aiden’s eyeball before Stiles can so much as flinch.

Stiles sinks to his knees between the two dead alphas, trying not to hyperventilate, and Allison waits for him to catch his breath before pulling him to his feet.

“That was stupid,” she tells him as they walk back out. “Derek’s pissed.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He got lucky, he knows. He should be dead right now. Again. “Thanks,” he tells Allison, and then stops, unable to make her understand how sincere he is. She pulls him into a quick hug, and he knows she gets it.

Derek is _furious_ , grabbing Stiles as soon as they cross the outer perimeter and manhandling him back to the car in a way he hasn’t in ages. “Don’t ever do that again,” Derek hisses, face too close, and Stiles stares at him wide-eyed, proximity and physical contact leaving him wide open to everything Derek feels, fury driven by guilt, yes, but an underlying affection, fear for Stiles motivated by something that Stiles isn’t ready to recognize yet. He blinks, turning his face away.

“I’m not sorry,” he says, even though he kind of is, and Derek sighs.

“Just get in the car, Stiles,” Derek says. “There are still two of them left.”

***

Isaac and Boyd corner Kali a few days later and call in Allison without Stiles needing to get involved, but Deucalion remains impossible to track down. Stiles has been alive again for almost a month before Deucalion makes another appearance, standing in the middle of the road while Stiles and Derek are driving another loop of the outermost perimeter, layering another circle of mountain ash over the old one.

Deucalion slams a fist into the hood of the Camaro, metal buckling at the blow, and moves quicker than Stiles’ eye can follow to pull Derek from the car. Derek fights back, but Deucalion shatters his legs and slams his cane through Derek’s spine, and Derek’s howl cuts off when Deucalion breaks his neck.

Stiles pauses, thumb hovering over his phone. Allison won’t make it before Derek dies, and Deucalion is waiting, claws embedded in Derek’s chest, watching Stiles.

Stiles presses the button to call Allison and gets out of the car.

“He’ll heal from this, you know,” Deucalion says.

“I know,” Stiles says, although it’s almost impossible to believe. Deucalion wipes blood from his already-healing face with the hand not currently attached to Derek’s chest. Derek managed a few good shots, at least. “What do you want?” Stiles asks.

“Break the perimeter,” Deucalion says.

Stiles hesitates.

“Do you want to feel him die? It will be worse than it was with the beta girl,” Deucalion tells him.

“How do you know about that?” Stiles asks. He’s playing for time, but if Deucalion understands how this works, Stiles needs to know, needs more information about what’s happening to him.

He can’t feel anything from Derek, right now. It should be a relief. It isn’t.

“I know a lot of things,” Deucalion says. He flexes his fingers, almost idly, and Stiles takes a step forward.

“Don’t,” Stiles says.

“It’s almost the new moon,” Deucalion says, conversationally, as though Stiles hasn’t said anything. He tilts his head up to the sky. “Do you know what happens then?” He looks at the phone in Stiles’ hand, then back at the line of mountain ash. “ _Break the perimeter,_ ” Deucalion snarls, “or he dies before your pet hunter even figures out where you are.”

“Promise you’ll leave without hurting any of us,” Stiles says. Allison knows the route they were taking, she can’t be that far out. He can still—

Deucalion squeezes, and Stiles can feel claws brushing against his own heart. Derek’s death, waiting for him. “Swear it,” Stiles grits out, through the tightening in his throat.

Deucalion holds still for a long moment. “I swear,” he says, finally, meeting Stiles’ gaze, and Stiles crouches, brushing his hand across the line to banish the barrier, more thought than any physical remnant of mountain ash.

“I can’t hurt you more than you’ve already hurt yourself,” Deucalion tells him, sounding almost kind. He pats Derek gently on the chest as he rises, and Stiles flinches back, just in case Deucalion is planning to go back on his word, but Deucalion just nods. “Take a deep breath,” Deucalion advises, and Stiles wants to ask what that means, but Deucalion is already reaching for his cane, twisting to step across the impotent line of mountain ash.

Allison pulls up thirty seconds later. Derek is still out, unconscious on the ground but healing, and Deucalion is long gone.

“It’s over,” Stiles tells her. “We’re done.”

***

Derek heals quickly once he wakes up, faster than Boyd and Isaac did after their altercation with Kali. By the night of the new moon, the physical damage is gone.

They’re all at Lydia’s, picking over the last of the burgers as the sun slowly sinks below the treeline. It’s the middle of September, their first weekend free of the alpha pack, and Stiles doesn’t remember Deucalion’s warning until it’s too late.

He drops his plate, clawing at his throat. He can feel the noose, pulling tight around his neck, his lungs clamoring against his ribs. _Take a deep breath,_ Deucalion had said, but he can’t, he can’t breathe at all. The pack surrounds him, alarmed faces wavering as his vision goes spotty, then black.

He doesn’t pass out. That’s the worst part. The bond linking him to the pack is a close second, though. After a while, he can’t separate his own panic from theirs, Scott trying to talk him through _dying_ , like there are any words to make this better, make this easier.

The noose isn’t really there, but he can feel it, underneath his fingers, as he tries to tug it loose enough to let in just the tiniest gasp of oxygen.

Derek’s guilt and anxiety would suffocate him if he weren’t already airless, breathless, choking on his own death. _The first snapped thread will return the caster’s death on each new moon,_ the spell had said. He hadn’t understood what that meant. He understands now.

It lasts until sunrise. The sky isn’t even light yet when his throat opens up and air comes rushing back into his lungs. His vision clears, and he can see the dried tear tracks on Lydia’s face, Boyd and Isaac hovering at the edge of the room, Allison curled up against Scott, their matching, miserable expressions.

Derek has stayed beside him all night, his hands and forearms bruised from Stiles’ grip.

“I have to leave,” Stiles says, and he’s surprised to hear his own voice come out steady, instead of as wrecked as he feels.

“You have to finish _high school_ ,” Lydia replies, an argument they’ve been having for weeks, now. He’s still officially dead, didn’t start class with the others at the beginning of September. He shakes his head.

“I can’t stay here,” he says. He has to force his fingers to let go of Derek’s wrist, and the immediate cessation of fear and anxiety reassures him that this is the right decision. “This thing, the link with the pack, whatever — it’s too much. I need to clear my head.”

“Where will you go?” Scott asks. Stiles shrugs. He hasn’t thought that far ahead yet.

“Anywhere,” Stiles says. “Look, Peter said something about human ambassadors, to connect with other packs. Maybe I can make some new friends for us. Allies. Maybe someone else will know how to make the bond less...intrusive.” He looks at Derek, who’s nodding, but all Stiles can hear is _don’t go._

He might not be able to hear Derek’s heartbeat, but he can know with a single look when Derek is lying. It’s less fun than he’d thought it would be.

“There’s a pack in Nevada you could talk to,” Derek says.

Scott helps him load the Jeep with supplies, and Lydia slips cash into his wallet, his suitcase, the glove compartment, and probably a half dozen places he doesn’t notice. “I’ll call,” Stiles promises, and Scott hauls him in for a hug, clinging tight.

“Every day,” Scott says. Stiles forces a laugh. It’s weak, but no one calls him on it.

“Nah, man, you’ll get sick of my voice. I’ll change it up: you, Lydia. Derek.” He can’t look at Derek, doesn’t want to know what Derek is feeling right now. It’s already too much, saying goodbye to his best friend, to the girl he’s loved since third grade, to the town that’s swallowed too much blood.

“You’d better,” Lydia says. She kisses his cheek, then turns on a stylish heel and marches back into the house. Scott lingers for a moment, then follows her, and Stiles is alone with Derek.

The key is in the ignition, the Jeep’s engine rumbling patiently, and Stiles stares at the unhappy set of Derek’s mouth in the driver’s side mirror. “You can’t protect me from this,” Stiles says, but Derek doesn’t look away, just stands there, waiting.

 _To hell with it,_ Stiles thinks, and shoves open the door, tumbling out of the Jeep to trip into Derek’s personal space. He hesitates, then grabs a steadying handful of Derek’s shirt before pulling him in for a kiss.

It’s clumsy and a little awkward, and the link bursts wide open between them, a staggering influx of surprise and regret and simple longing. Stiles freezes for a second, ready to pull back, but Derek makes a sound, low in his throat, and slides a warm hand around the back of Stiles’ head. His lips are soft, pressing against Stiles’ mouth, and because Stiles forgot to close his eyes, he sees the moment Derek’s flutter closed, dark lashes brushing against his cheek.

Derek lets him go the instant he starts to sway backward, but Stiles has to step back, look away, before he can even try to sort out his own reaction to the kiss. Stiles licks his lips, thoughtful, prodding at the part of his lower lip that already feels a little bruised.

“One for the road,” Stiles mutters, and he’s not even looking at Derek, but the proximity must be enough, because the link sparks, sharp bursts of annoyance and confusion. Stiles flinches away, turning to clamber back into the Jeep without looking at Derek.

He’s out of Beacon Hills before sunset, the sharp sliver of the waxing moon promising him an entire month of respite.

***

Nevada’s a dead end, magic-wise, but the pack there is friendly, former allies of the Hale pack from a couple generations ago. He ends up waiting out the next new moon there, having warned them what to expect. They leave him alone, and it’s marginally easier.

He’s still dying, hour by hour until sunrise, but at least he’s not also being subsumed by the pack, buried under their reflected agony.

He spends more time on the phone with Derek than he does with Scott and Lydia, most days. Derek doesn’t have class, after all, and Stiles drives thousands of miles of highway with nothing but the radio and the sound of his own voice. Even Derek’s minimalist approach to conversation is better than nothing. And it turns out Derek is easier to understand when Stiles isn’t trying to sort out the confusing emotional miasma that Derek projects through the link.

When he comes home for the first time, after six months on the road, the rush of pleasure and delight from Derek when their eyes meet almost knocks him to the ground. Derek wants him there, just _wants_ him. Stiles hadn’t been ready to see it before. He still can’t block out the link, but this isn’t so bad, he thinks.

“How long are you staying?” Derek asks, once Stiles has hugged everyone hello. Isaac and Scott are arguing over the last slice of pizza, and Stiles sprawls a little wider on the couch, lets his knee knock against Derek’s. The moon is waning but still mostly full, fat and bright overhead.

“A week,” Stiles says. Enough time to relax, but not so long he can’t put some space between himself and the pack before the next new moon hits. Derek doesn’t argue, but the link between them sours with Derek’s strangely intermingled displeasure and joy. Stiles makes a face. Derek is still easier for him to understand when he’s being terse on a phone call from two thousand miles away.

He waits until the rest of the pack has turned in for the night before slipping into Derek’s room. He knows he’s welcome, can tell Derek wants him here just by looking at him. When he touches Derek, desire radiates through the bond, warm like summer sunlight.

Still, he wants to be sure he’s not misreading things. It wouldn’t be the first time. The bond complicates more than it simplifies. “Tell me you want this,” Stiles says, looking for verbal confirmation, but Derek just kisses him.

It’s a good enough answer, Stiles thinks, and kisses Derek back.

The bond amplifies _everything_. Stiles has no experience with sex, but he figures it can’t possibly be better than this.

***

**EPILOGUE:**

Stiles runs into Deucalion again almost six years later.

“Stiles,” Deucalion greets him, respectful enough that Stiles can overlook any lingering bitterness. They’ve all lost things. “You know, down in Georgia they’re talking about you. They don’t know your name, just that the Hale pack has the power to smother the sun and bury the moon.”

Stiles knows better than to look away. Power isn’t everything. His reputation is one part luck and two parts swagger. He raises his chin and waits.

Deucalion smiles at him, like he can see the shadow of Stiles’ death, clinging closer with every fading sliver of moonlight. “You won’t be dying forever,” he says. “When you’ve outlived the rest of your pack, come find me.”

It’s been a long time since Stiles has had to rely on sarcasm as his defense, but it’s still his preferred strategy. “Of course,” he says. “Because we were always such good friends.”

“If you were going to walk away from all this,” Deucalion says, “you would have done it years ago.” He steps forward, close enough for Stiles to feel the movement of his chest when he inhales. “If I killed you now, would I live long enough for your alpha to seek his revenge?”

Stiles doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. The spells tied to his death are fewer than rumour would suggest, but Deucalion doesn’t need to know that. “Try it and see,” he says, and tilts his head the tiniest fraction, baring his throat to Deucalion’s teeth.

It’s an easy gamble. He’s had too much practice.

Deucalion steps back, nodding farewell. “Don’t forget me,” he says, and Stiles watches him turn and walk down the road until he’s just a speck in the distance.

***

He stops by Scott and Allison’s apartment on the way home, checking in and letting Scott fuss over him instead of Allison, for a change. She rolls her eyes at him over Scott’s head, eight months pregnant and still perfectly capable of taking out a werewolf without moving from the couch. Her favorite crossbow is tucked against the side table.

“I should go,” Stiles says, half-regretful, after he’s helped Allison demolish the remains of a casserole.

“I’ll give Isaac a heads up,” Scott says. He attempts a leer, but it’s ruined by the faintly grossed-out feeling Stiles is picking up through the pack bond. Scott’s supportive, but the idea of Stiles and Derek having sex is still a bit much for him.

“Thanks,” Stiles says. He passes Isaac on the road to Derek’s house, currently inhabited by just Derek and Isaac since Boyd got his own apartment six months back. Isaac gives him a cheerful wave, clearly happier with the idea of his alpha getting laid than Scott is.

Derek’s waiting when he pulls up in front of the house, the coiling heat of his desire sparking the air between them as Stiles slams the door of his Jeep shut and leans against it. He tilts his head at Derek, watching from the porch, and murmurs, quiet enough that only a werewolf could hear it, “Did you miss me?”

Amusement flashes down the bond, and Derek saunters down the steps, prowling forward until he’s inches away from Stiles. “Come inside, and I’ll show you how much,” Derek promises, and Stiles closes his eyes, focuses on his own want until it feels like a match for Derek’s own, and not just a mirror. He’s fought hard for the ability to separate his feelings from those of the pack, but Derek’s the hardest to block out.

He opens his eyes and nods, stepping forward to kiss Derek, and Derek kisses him back, the bond echoing his relief and welcome until Stiles is heady with it. “Come inside,” Derek whispers again, and Stiles leads the way, stumbling backward toward the house, pulling Derek with each step.

The moon is waxing bright, halfway to full in the sky above them, and Stiles is alive, breathing quick and easy as Derek touches him and touches him and touches him, alive and alive and alive, weeks to go until his death returns again. Maybe this time he’ll stay through the new moon, let Derek hold him when the night steals his breath. It would be both better and worse, he thinks, having someone there, but having to feel Derek’s anguish as he suffers.

He lies awake next to Derek, watching him breathe until sunrise. Derek looks older, Stiles thinks. They all do. Death will catch up with all of them, someday. Stiles tries not to think of that as a good thing.

If he doesn’t entirely succeed, no one has to know.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR FIC:
> 
> This fic includes major character death (temporary), minor character death (permanent), and suicide for magic/plot reasons (NOT depression-related). Also, Stiles accidentally soul-bonds to the entire pack. Oops?


End file.
